So, they had a festival next to my house this weekend. Naturally I was away, at a surprise 60th birthday party, honing my uncle skills, playing with balloons, hiding behind bushes, and mopping up sick. “You didn’t miss much,” said Jeres. “I think it would have made you angry.”

He’s probably right. While my shopkeeper and his manchild lackey are lovely, my neighbours are mostly pretentious art snobs, and a whole festival full of them and their pals does indeed sound quite hellish, especially compared to hanging out with my three year old common law niece, who can’t hold her chocolate but is fantastic company regardless. The artholes had a party the other week and kept me up until 4 in the morning playing terrible Michael Jackson bootlegs. My Quit Smoking With Paul McKenna hypnosis CD won out in the end, but still. I am in danger of breaking my all-people-loving bubble and going Hulk – splitting my wifebeater and re-entering that world of pain I used to rage around in, like a drop of water in a hot chip-pan. Grah!

How long, Dear lord, how long? I am assuming there is a light at the end of this rotten tunnel, but what if there’s just another fucking tunnel? My cells are fading and I hate all that God damned drip-drip-dripping. There is hole forming in the centre of my skull. I would have hoped it to have been my third eye opening, but I fear it may be a second arsehole.

Ho hum. Radio 4 tells me, monotonically, that Barclays just announced six month profits of £2.98bn (billion), “slightly below analysts’ forecasts”… HSBC, meanwhile, made $5bn (billion). Why they relay their glad tidings in dollars and Barclays do it in pounds is beyond the ignorant likes of myself, but I know one thing, and that is that we are being taken the fucking piss out of, on a fucking gargantuan scale, and that I haven’t run amok in The City with some nunchakus and a bazooka is merely a byproduct of my not being able to afford nunchakus and a bazooka.

Ha! When I told you to “make sure you’re here at the start of next week… I am gonna be getting up to some of my old tricks,” I didn’t mean moaning like an old gitbag about crap I shouldn’t be concerned with. (Damn, I used to be fucking good at that.) No, I meant something else. Hold tight, tomorrow’s looking good OK.

It rankled with me because I like to think that I'm pretty tolerant, especially of noise. But they would play football at 5am against our bedroom wall and have very noisy sex when we had children around.

There's nothing that boils my blood more than other people having a much better fucking time than me.

So, after 3 months of many sleepless nights, threatened stabbings, a car getting blown up in the alley behind our house, and other such fun, I reported them to the Environmental Health people.

Who put them in a hole.

http://annamadeleine.co.uk Anna M

The 'festival' (or so they called it) was full of arty, snobby, up their arses fuckwits and none of the art I saw was actually any good.

Although I did only bother to go on the Friday cos after that I didn't want to go back!

The bagel shop is nice though and we checked some fairly good street art round the area.